That's right. It is just like a special needs Sin City.
Iron Sky is a concept in search of an effort. An emo-merchandiser’s dream with no product to sell. A low budget exercise in exploiting the young and impressionable with hooks aplenty on the surface but nothing meritorious to discuss aside from the most basic premise.
But it is a premise.
A US funded publicity seeking moon landing uncovers a large Nazi base on the dark side of the moon – which is apparently but two steps from the side we see. The Nazis, lying low in a gigantic swastika shaped installation, have been training, breeding and biding their time until they could once again return to Earth and reign supreme over the gormless masses, spreading der word of der Fuhrer.
Unfortunately though in the six and a half decades since WW2 progress has been muddled. Time has not been all that productive for all, though even this is odd. Scientists have developed space travel capabilities far beyond those of Earth, but they need a few iPhones to complete the arrangements for an attack launch.
This necessitates a clandestine visit to Earth to find the next gen devices, and a young Nazi zealot with grand ambitions takes his future breeding partner and a bleached white African American former astronaut back to help.
Yep it’s that kind of film. Don’t worry though, if you managed to force a laugh at the former paragraph you should cut your losses, the 90 minutes of film couldn’t do that for me.
Complications arise when the Project Runway looking staff of the Sarah Palin-esque President come across the travelling Nazis and decide to integrate their ideals and visions into the latest presidential campaigns.
Every sarcastic comment that you can come up with here will be apt.
The filmmakers were a conglomerate themselves, well meaning profiteers from many nations who obviously thought there were laughs somewhere in the concept, but equally obviously thought that another country would find them and bring them to the surface.
Alas these were no United Nations of comedy gold.
They definitely didn’t blow the budget on special effects or the cast, the initial moon landing scene left me yearning for the glory days of Ed Wood. Everything looks like a set, even the scenes which probably weren’t filmed on a set, and most disturbingly for a juvenile stupid comedy the greater proportion of the sequences featuring German speakers – the bulk of the film – are stubbornly subtitled.
Which begs the question: in a film about space Nazis from the dark side of the moon, is realism really that big of a fucking deal?
Iron Sky is silly – but not fun silly – and when you take all the fun out of silly all you are left with is just… silly.
Final Rating – 5 / 10. Space Nazis. Two words got this to cinemas. 90 minutes of crappyness moved it from cinemas in about three weeks.
